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America is in the midst of an entrepreneurial renaissance.
Incubators are popping up everywhere, investors are coming out of
the woodwork. America, pat yourself on the back! Life-long
corporate employees are quitting their jobs to strike out on
their own. People are starting businesses with the potential to
bring countless benefits that no one can predict, assuming of
course, the startup survives the transition to a thriving
business. The process is not what it looks like.

A quick metaphor. A yoga instructor recently told me something
interesting. People watch the teacher do a pose, then try the
pose themselves, and almost never succeed, no matter how hard
they work. “You can’t learn yoga by watching,'' he told me.
"Seeing somebody do it won't tell you the process for doing it.
Learn the step-by-step, the small adjustments and avoidable
mistakes everyone makes, and next thing you know you're standing
on your head.’’

The same is true for startups. Watching and reading about
prolific entrepreneurs is worthwhile but, paradoxically, can lead
to four mistaken assumptions that make it hard for startups to
just start.

1. A Startup Isn't a Business. A startup is the
search for the business model, while a business is the
implementation of a known model. There is a huge
difference. When you’re just starting, practically everything
about your startup - pricing, distribution, target market,
revenue streams - is all guesswork. Your launch is the first of
many tests that will answer the big questions about your startup.
The tests yield data that will lead you to tweak your model until
it works smoothly and sustainably.

Once you have proven that you know how to deliver your product to
people who love it, and you have a replicable mechanism for
growth, you’ve reached the crucial stage of product/market fit.
Then write all the business plans all you want. If you follow
this methodology your product will evolve from your original
vision to mirror the market’s needs, not yours.

2. Don't pitch investors before your pitch is
irresistable. If all you have is an idea, a “business
plan,” your best friend and maybe a wireframe or prototype, you
have too little to interest a sophisticated investor. Gamblers
sink money into pre-traction startups, investors don’t.

Raise money from friends and family if you must, don’t raise it
at all if you can get by, but don’t pitch investors before you
are ready. Launch early with a smaller version of your product.
Build that product with people motivated by equity. Drip it to
them slowly so you don’t give it up all-at-once to someone who
could turn out an incorrect fit. Tweak the offering until it
fits. Then you’re investable. Sell your story to angel investors
who can help you scale the small, but proven, feature-set.

3.Walk the walk, then talk the
talk. Pop quiz! Which of the following will make your
startup a real business?

a. Attending every single networking event in a 20-mile radius.

b. Adding so many stickers to your laptop that a bullet proof
coating forms.

c. Referring to yourself as a “ninja’’ on LinkedIn.

d. Living out every possible stereotype you see on HBO's “Silicon
Valley.”

Yeah, none of the above will make your startup thrive but
actually building a startup does. Systematically test
your ideas in a real marketplace with real customers. Anything
more than a simple first offering will make it too difficult to
just start.

4. “Striving for perfection” is not launching.
Launch early. Launch fast. Accept that bugs and imperfections
will happen. You will not always know immediately how to fix
them. Stop organizing focus groups. Burn your surveys. Just
launch already. You will learn more about running a
startup in the first two weeks after launch than most MBA
program teach in two years.

Don’t be scared of the ramifications.. Every startup begins with
too few customers. Stop worrying about embarrassing yourself to
the early few because their feedback, even negative, is the map
to becoming a real business.